


Alpha

by Hyacinthz



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: :-P that one's a joke, Gen, Implied/Referenced Dipper, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-12 13:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19947217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthz/pseuds/Hyacinthz
Summary: And the sun was doing a magic trick that made him hear seagulls and forget fear.orFord, Mabel, a beach





	Alpha

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after The Last Mabelcorn but ignores pesky things like "rising action" and "the show's timeline and climax" in favor of everyone having a nice day.
> 
> Please enjoy!

This was something he’d missed: that feeling of eyes on him, that intake of breath. That moment where he knew something was coming, something wonderful enough to drag him from his books. Because for all his inventions, it’d always been Stanley who created adventures for them both.

“Let’s do something, Grunkle Ford,” she said, loud. She said it like she’d just burst into the room, like they hadn’t been taking up the dining room table with yarn and needles and books for the past hour since Stanley dragged Dipper out trawling secondhand shops for taxidermy.

She wasn’t good at silence, but he could work with that. He worked best with that, in fact. A little humming never killed anyone and the rhythmic clack of knitting needles lulled him into easy concentration. Kicking feet, tapping fingers—they were all old hat. He’d always worked better with them. And if she and Waddles oinked back and forth now and again, well—it was only a little different.

“What’re you thinking, Mabel?” She’d hooked him instantly with _a full finger friendlier_ and he won back some points with the crossbow, but he knew it was the unicorns that made them friends. _Unicorns are buttfaces._ She’d said after her friends left, slouched against the kitchen counter with her hair flipped over her face and her knees tucked into her torn sweater. And he’d closed the fridge, put down his freshly buzzing can of pitt cola, and really thought about it. He sat right down next to her. _They are,_ he’d said. _And I’m sorry for not warning you. I thought—well. I thought it was just me she didn’t like. I thought if she’d help anyone—I thought she would help_ you _for sure._ This confession brought Mabel sliding sideways till she was half-fallen over and tucked against his side. He did the logical thing with his arm and moved it. And when he folded it around her, she grabbed his hand. Ever since they activated the barrier, he’d felt the house hum warm and safe around him. It’d never done that before.

 _Me too. At least we got to fight them._ The words came grumpy and pissed-off and Ford laughed then, really. Mabel flipped her hair from her face and grinned up at him. _Grunkle Ford,_ she said. There was no question in that voice whatsoever. _Do you want to see my scrapbooks._ And the magic was, he could breathe again. And so he said _yes_ because it was the only answer and because he really, really did.

“I’m thinking,” she said now, pulling herself onto the crowded tabletop and counting options off her fingers. “We could paint. And I have glitter glue! Which is scrapbook-related, but we only looked last time. This time, we create! But we’ll get more glitter on your sweater. Or we can set up a prank for Dipper. Or we can play a game—” she gave him a considering look here. “—I could be convinced. Maybe. If you do all the numbers.”

“I know other games,” he said, easy. He closed his journal. There’s something familiar about this. It’s not a negotiation; he’ll do what makes her happy. “Or you could teach me. And I happen to like my sweater like this.”

“Knew you had taste, just look at those sideburns. I know—” she said. “I know we want to stay inside. But we can make water balloons! Gru—I mean, I think we have some more fireworks! Can we go just a little outside?”

“The golf cart is fully charged, right?” He’d slept well the night before and they’d all had breakfast together and the sun was doing a magic trick that made him hear seagulls and forget fear. “And you have a swimsuit? Get Waddles. Let’s go to the lake.”

He’d spent something like a month in a dimension where the inhabitants had the unfortunate habit of exploding from sheer happiness. A jolt of worry cut through his mood, just for a breath, when Mabel made the exact face that foretold the moment of combustion. “Grunkle Ford!” She grabbed at him—at his shoulders—and said it like it was the only thing she could possibly say. He laughed enough that he couldn’t tell if he was shaking with it or she was shaking him. “Oh my gosh, I need to get my suit!” She certainly shook him, then, a stern finger pointed his way. “Don’t go anywhere. Don’t you dare.”

He’d never thought he’d feel like this again. “You know I won’t,” he said. They left in minutes, Mabel stopping to very seriously smear a mix of glitter glue and excess sunblock on her note to Stanley.

“He won’t like that we took the cart,” she said from behind massively pink sunglasses and an equally pink pig, and _he won’t like_ got Ford thinking again for a moment. The golf cart puttered along and fear looped in on itself and sat in his gut until Mabel cleared it away. “He’ll live. We earned this beach vacay. Alpha twins?”

“Alpha twins.” He’d always been good at that, at the instant affirmative response. But wasn’t it always true? “Say, how have traffic laws changed in the last thirty years? Is it legal to do this?” Driving with his feet had been necessary in at least three dimensions he passed through; he’d gotten good.

“Pfft, Grunkle Ford. It’s only legal to drive with your feet, duh.” He wasn’t watching her; he was watching the road. He was watching the turns, it’d been so long. . . But he remembered how many there were, which shores they led to. She sighed a breath before she spoke. “I really love it here, you know? Like more than I’ve ever loved anywhere, ever. I can’t believe summer has to end and then . . . we’ll just leave.”

“There are places like that.” There were, and there were days when that love for a home worked into the air itself. Strange, that so much horror could come along and he still wondered whose it was filtering the air today: his, or hers? His smelled like salt water taffy sometimes, and boardwalk trash. “It’s not very scientific of me, really. But I’ve always felt there are places like that. I wish they could stay.”

“Well that’s easy,” she said. “You can find the science. If it’s real, it’s there, right? And then I’ll find a way we can stay.” _I’ve got the other thing._

The smell of pine trees was nothing like the smell of salt, and yet. He’d found his turn. He parked the cart away in the trees and took the key with him. Mabel set Waddles down, gentle, and then bolted. He heard her words float back his way: _GRUNKLE FORD, IT’S LIKE A REAL BEACH._

He followed her trail, slow. He’d been sad here so many times. But she was right, the sun was high and today it was like a real beach. She’d run right into the lake, pig squealing after her, and now she surfaced with a clumsy hair flip. “You’re swimming too, right?” He only had one pair of pants that fit him correctly and he hadn’t really wanted to let anyone see his ill-advised tattoos, but it wasn’t even a question. He pulled off his shoes, then his sweater. He resolved to do laundry that evening and made his way shoulder-deep into the water.

“Cannonball!” Mabel torpedoed Waddles toward him and Ford got a face of lake water and pig snout for all his trouble.

“Mabel,” he said, mock serious. “There’s something you must understand: I am the best at splashing.” He attacked.

He was the best at splashing, and she screamed and gargled with laughter. He was also the best at throwing her as far as he could, and serving as a diving board, and—once she had convinced him it wasn’t cruel—throwing Waddles as far as he could, too. He hauled her over his shoulder and she said “Grunkle Ford, style icon,” with real appreciation, and he knew she’d caught a look at that specific tattoo on his neck. “We’re gonna match one day.”

“I would avoid telling your parents that. You’ll get me in trouble. Hey Mabel,” he said. “Let’s go find the caves. There are some along the shore—they used to be really amazing. Want to see?”

“Are you kidding me? You know I do!”

They didn’t have flashlights or matches or even towels, but Ford passed off his dry sweater to keep Mabel from shivering and gathered some familiar luminescent fungi in a bundle, orange like a torch.

“Will it glow forever?” She asked, leaning in to see better. Her face lit up—literally and figuratively—when he tilted it towards her chin and confirmed that, barring the end of time itself, it will.

“Stay close,” he said. “Things have surely shifted since my last visit. We should both be careful.” She took his hand. Waddles snuffled just behind them.

“The sand sparkles. You’re seeing that, right? This isn’t a Smile Dip situation?” Ford grinned.

“Just wait,” he said. “You’ll love it.”

It had changed; the narrow hallways were tighter (but he had filled out some, hadn’t he?) and the air seemed warmer (but he had more company now, didn’t he?).

“Grunkle Ford, this is—” She straightened in the cave’s central chamber, flinging her arms straight up like they might finish the sentence for her. Ford crawled his way through, catching up, and raised the bundle of fungi high to better light the room. It wasn’t anything anomalous, not really. Unheard-of in Oregon, perhaps. But not capital-W weird: it was mica, Lepidolite--a room full of the stuff. The cavern was all untouched, flakey folds of mineral. The walls were ripples of silvered pinks and purples, the floor massive steppes that echoed patterns throughout the place. You could kneel, examine a fragment, and see those same designs writ tiny and intricate, folding in on themselves. Mabel stepped carefully; she touched a formation. Every surface sparkled, especially his niece. After all, she’d used his glitter-crusted sweater to dry off. “Grunkle Ford.” Her voice echoed, low. “This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

It couldn’t have been, not really. She’d spoken to unicorns in an enchanted glade no more than two days ago, and Ford had it on good authority that she’d said the same thing about no less than a boy band, a merman, her own puppet show, her pig, Soos talking to a girl, and gladiatorial time combat.

Good authority was Stanley. There’d been a moment of breathing, of being with his brother again: he’d brought up his talk with Mabel in the kitchen, the scrapbook. It’d been casually done. He didn’t get outside much—and one can only fight the impulse to say _how great is my niece? I have a nephew and he's fantastic_ for so long. As soon as he spoke, worry filtered in (is it my place? Am I replacing him?) before resentment stabbed its way forward (he took _my_ place; he replaced me). And then Stan spoke. He was subdued at first, his sentences a strict scrapbook of fact/opinion: _Dipper found your journal, I was grumpy about it. Mabel knitted me five sweaters, I was grumpy about it._ But Stan was himself, and soon enough he was speaking with his hands, gestures wide, careless, and liable to hit Ford in the face. Because Ford was himself, too. He always leaned closer when Stan got to the good part.

“Mabel,” he said, later. They were driving home. They’d air-dried on the way up from the cavern, and any feeling of salt on his skin was either memory or a wish. She leaned heavily against Waddles, who leaned right back, snoring. Ford’s turtleneck smelled like algae. He had to tell her this. “Before, on the way here—you got it backwards. If this place—that feeling—is real, will you promise me you’ll find the science to explain it? I’ll do the other thing. I’ll make sure we can—all of us. I’ll make sure we can find a way to stay.”

“You know I will,” she said, sleepy. “All of us together?”

Lake water and flakes of mica are not unlike saltwater and sand, and boats can sail ‘round a lake without ever really leaving. The only thing left to solve was the rift. So he said it, after all this time: “Yes.”


End file.
